Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Letter B

CBWPC: Letter B (Cee’s Photography)

 This is the last picture I took of Beddy before she passed away just after Christmas.  She was my constant companion for a long time.  I miss her dearly.  She was such a sweetheart and those eyes got me every time.

Last year while we were looking for Halloween costume ideas, we came across the Presidential Nominee masks.  The girls fought over trying on the Bernie Sanders mask because they really liked him and wished he was still in the running.

In my family, we played a lot of games from board games to card games and to this day, we still play whenever we get together.  I am trying to in still that kind of fun into the girls I work with.  I try to play games with them at least once a week.

Books are a huge part of my life.  I feel like they keep me sane.  Whenever life gets too crazy, I know I can escape into a good book and get my mind off of everything.  Reading gives my brain a chance to do some  background processing and I get to come back to reality with a rested brain and new ideas to deal with life’s craziness.

When I was a kid we lived in our car and often our Dad would park us down here at Fort Point at night to sleep. I loved listening to the waves to sleep, but it was really cold. I go down there often to look at the Bridge and remember how far I’ve come. This bird joined me in my reflections the last time I went.

We were starving when we got to LA and the closest sit down restaurant we could find was Bob’s Big Boy. I hadn’t eaten there since I was a kid living with my Grandma in South San Francisco. The burgers were still quite delicious.

Outrageous Orange

Color Your World – Outrageous Orange

I took this picture at the Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Patch in Morgan Hill, CA many years ago when I took my preschoolers on a field trip there.  It was such a beautiful day for late October.  Everything on the farm seemed so vibrant from the green of the corn stalks that made up the maze to the giant hill of pumpkins.  It was such a wonderful experience for us all.  Field trips were always hectic, but that is one trip I actually miss going on with the kids.

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Costume

Costume (Jennifer Nichole Wells)

At my husband’s previous job, they had a costume contest every year and the winner would get a paid day off to choose whenever they want throughout the year.  My husband worked there almost 10 years and every year we tried our hardest to get the win.  We were successful four of those years.  The featured image is from the year we dressed him up as a zombie.  I had finally gotten him to watch The Walking Dead with me and we thought we could do something simple.  I can’t find the pictures from the other years unfortunately as there were some good ones like Death, a Vampire, Mr. Potato Head, and the Big Bad Wolf to name a few.  I miss getting up early and doing his make-up and helping him get ready.  At his new job he has to be in uniform, so no costumes for him.  This will be my first year not wearing a costume since I no longer work in a school.  It already feels weird.  I’m gonna miss seeing the kids all dressed up in their costumes.  I was always curious what costumes they were going to choose.  Would they go with what was popular at the moment like the year we had 3 Rapunzels after the release of Tangled or will they be something they love like a Monkey or something time tested like Batman.  I guess I will just have to hope that I get some trick-or-treaters tonight.  We never get any at my apartment, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hope right?!?

 

 

52 Weeks Photo Challenge – Week 12: Street

Street (The Girl That Dreams Awake)

One of the most famous streets in San Francisco is the Crookedest Street (Lombard Street).  I have always been fascinated by this street with all its 8 crazy curves, the flowers, the brickwork, and the insane line you have to wait in if you want to actually drive on it.  My Dad took my sister and I walking down it when we were kids.  It wasn’t crazy busy that day for some reason, so we were able to take our time walking down through the curves feeling the steepness in our knees.  My Dad stopped us in front of one of the houses and told us a story about how it was a real life haunted house.  Click here to read the whole story.  I must have been 4 or 5 and I remember being really freaked out by the tale he told.  We stood in front of the house just staring at it for a few minutes after he finished, my imagination running wild.  I got goose bumps all over and decided to keep walking down the street.  My Dad and sister followed after me.  I don’t think I have walked down that street since.  I have driven down it  with friends who have visited us and I get the chills every time.  I don’t always tell the story.  It depends on my audience, but I thought it was perfect to share at this spooky time of year.

Ever since I have been terrified and yet fascinated by haunted houses.  My Dad always took us to scary movies starting when we were really little and though Jaws (1975) and Alien (1979) scared the  crap out of me, the one movie that really invaded my consciousness was The Amityville Horror (1979) because it was supposedly based on a true story.  Apparently, there are now conflicting accounts in regards to what really happened in the house, but the movie  was creepy.   It still gives me chills to think about it though I haven’t watched in over 20 years.  I didn’t even want to watch the re-make because I was worried with all the technology in movie making these days, I figured it would be even creepier.  My fascination with haunted houses never left me though.  I have always wanted to take a trip around the country visiting reportedly haunted houses, hotels, bed & breakfasts, battlefields, etc. like Jon Cusack’s character in 1408.  Talk about another truly scary and creepy movie.  The short story by Stephen King was great and the movie they made actually did it some justice unlike many movies based on books.

I haven’t visited many haunted houses yet, but I happen to live in a town with one of the weirdest haunted houses, the Winchester Mystery House.  The few times I have visited, I got chills as I moved through the house.  I also just felt really sad because here was this woman who had apparently fallen into a deep depression after the deaths of her husband and infant daughter only to seek a medium who told her that their deaths were due to the spirits killed by Winchester Rifles that supposedly now haunted the Winchester Family.  Mrs. Winchester was encouraged to move west and build a great big house for these spirits and as long as she didn’t stop building, she wouldn’t be the next to die.  If you’d like to read more about it, click on the link.  It’s actually a really interesting place.  If you are ever in San Jose, CA, the Winchester Mystery House is worth the tour whether you believe in ghosts or not.  The house is just an amazing structure as you can see from the website   There are flash light tours around Halloween, so this is a great time of year to come.

Hopefully I will make it to all the haunted places I’ve heard about one of these days.  I like to think of it as facing my fears and satisfying my curiosity.  What do you guys think?  Do you believe in curses?  Have any of you ever encountered a haunted house or have a ghost story?  I would love to hear them.  Happy Haunting this weekend!

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Gate

Gate (Jennifer Nichole Wells)

I just finished this embroidery project this past weekend.  It’s the Gates of Moria from The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien.  I have a friend who is a huge fan of both the books and movies, so I made her this tea towel as part of her birthday gift.  Gotta love Etsy.  I can find just about any pattern I want on there.  This one took me awhile to do though.  I kept having to move the ring around to make it feel comfortable to sew.  Soccer practice with my little charges has become my sewing time.  I went to Beverly’s today to get my next project.  I am going to hopefully do some more tea towels to go with the chips and dip bowl I painted at the pottery place last week.  My only problem is I wanted to do black tea towels, but I couldn’t find a white pencil to do the iron-on transfer.  I could only find the usual red pencil.  I guess I will have to push extra hard and hope I can see it when I iron it on.  I bought a white marking pencil in case I can see the transfer enough to trace it with the white.  I think I am making this way too hard, but hopefully it will work out because I have to get both the towels I want to do done by Sunday.  Which means I better stop typing and start tracing.  There’s a Stephen King movie marathon on AMC tonight.  I’m hoping it will keep me company while I get started.   Have a great evening everyone!

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Fog

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Fog (Jennifer Nichole Wells)

On my way to work early one morning I suddenly felt like I was driving into the beginning of a scary movie.  I had a few extra minutes, so I stopped real quick and took this photo.  It had been a really long time since I had seen fog and fog so thick I couldn’t see down the long Expressway.  My mind of course started thinking of every scary movie with a fog element. The one that came first and foremost is the old (1980) John Carpenter movie “The Fog” starring Jamie Lee Curtis.  I recently watched the remake on Netflix.  Why remake a movie if you aren’t going to make it better?  The second fog related movie that came to mind and is a lot more interesting is “The Mist”, based on a story by Stephen King.  Mr. King’s stories have always been a favorite, but they don’t always do them justice on the big screen.  “The Mist” wasn’t a bad adaptation.  I will forever be weary of fog.  Not knowing what lies ahead makes my imagination run wild.

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Spiders

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Spiders (Jennifer Nichole Wells)

My preschool students made these stained glass spiders one year.  The kids in my class were between 18 months and 4 years.  I cut the spiders for the little kids, but the rest they all did themselves.  I gave them each a square of contact paper and put out tissues squares of different Halloween colors.  Purple seemed to be the most popular color.  They had fun filling their squares and when I put them up in the window, they loved how the sun made them so bright and “spooky”.  During circle time, we talked about what they were afraid of and we all agreed, myself included, that spiders are just creepy.

Insects and spiders never really bugged me until I moved to Australia when I was 5.  The first house we lived in there had a roof that extended out aways from the the front door providing an area for shade out front.  Every night, really large spiders would build their webs between the roof extension and the ground.  There had to be at least 10 to 15 spider webs with spiders dead center when we would open the front door in the morning as we headed out to school.  I refused to got out the door with them all like that.  There was no way to get out without having to go through more than one web.  My Mom would bravely take a broom and swing it about breaking all the webs then sweeping away the spiders that  had dropped.  I still get the heebee geebees just thinking about it.  I really, really don’t like spiders, but they do intrigue me.  I like watching them build their webs or catching their food.  I just don’t like them in my house crawling about.  EEEEK!!!  Being a Preschool teacher meant that I had to be the adult and deal with the creepy crawlies that came into the classroom or that we encountered out on the playground.   Thank goodness it didn’t happen too often.

 

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Boo

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Boo (Jennifer Nichole Wells)

We never get trick-or-treaters at our apartment and so one year we though if we carved pumpkins and put them in the window, the kids would know they could come to our door.  I opened up the pumpkins, got out all the muck on the inside, and then drew the designs.  My husband then proceeded to carve them.  We choose the ghost for it’s spookiness, the “Welcome” to let kids know they could knock on our door, and the team logos to entice my husband into helping with the carving.  We got a few trick-or-treaters, but not enough to empty our candy bowl.  It was still fun to do the pumpkins together though.  I haven’t decided what we are going to carve this year.  Hmmm…

   

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Pumpkin

JNW’s Halloween Challenge: Pumpkin (Jennifer Nichole Wells)

As I have mentioned before, I used to be a preschool teacher.  In planning my curriculum for each theme I taught, I always tried to include science somehow.  Halloween has so many experiments to choose from.  For this one, we needed a pumpkin.  So we went on a field trip to the pumpkin patch and got ourselves a pumpkin.  Then I drew out 3 different faces we could carve and let them vote which one we would use.  We opened up the pumpkin and examined it with our 5 senses and talked about our observations.  Then we all worked together to scoop out the seeds, which we later baked for our afternoon snack.  Finally, we worked together to carve the pumpkin.  They helped do the nose and part of the mouth.  I did the rest while they took their naps.  The next day we did one of our favorite experiments.  I let them sprinkle in some baking soda and then they got to take turns pouring in the colored vinegar.  They thought it was fun to see the suds come out of the pumpkin’s mouth.  I learned that I we should’ve carved the face higher so the suds would have time to build up before spilling out.  If you have kids or grandkids, it’s a fun experiment to do for sure.